AOL and General Motors’ OnStar Orchestrate Live Web Ad

On Thursday at around 4:00 p.m. EDT, General Motors’ OnStar ran a 30-minute live video ad on various AOL properties and across the Web via AOL On, the company’s video distribution network.

The live ad was part of a new large scale campaign promoting both General Motors’s 2015 line of cars as well as OnStar and its new digital capabilities, which are designed to turn the average car into a Wi-Fi hotspot.

The live ad, which ran for a whopping 30 minutes, was tied to a real world marketing stunt. Leading up to Thursday’s ad rollout, AOL and GM had been placing large boxes in three cities, San Francisco, Boston and Ann Arbor, and inviting consumer to attempt to guess what is inside (among the guesses: 23,491 packets of ketchup and a smart couch). The contents of these boxes were revealed during the live spot (spoiler alert: each box contained a Wifi enabled GM car).

For OnStar, the unusual, innovative nature of the ad effort was as important as the ad itself, claimed Rich Martinek, Global Marketing Manager at OnStar. “I could just run an ad on TV,” he said. “But we need to build a story on advanced technology in a really credible way. And when you do communications it’s not just about the product and message, it’s the way you execute it. The way we’re doing it [should] be unexpected.”

AOL has tried something along these lines before, though not on this scale. Last summer, AOL tested a live video ad for the deodorant Secret that was part of the company’s efforts to build out a new live programming block–sort of AOL’ s answer to HuffPost Live. That programming plan eventually was put on hold.

The Secret ad was more of a let’s-put-on-a-show styled stunt, while this GM execution is designed as a strategic, high impact live media plan, explained Wendy MacGregor, AOL’s Senior Vice President of Sales. The campaign will continue to run on multiple sites following Thursday’s live stunt; The live video ads resided within oversized ad units that featured up to the minute social media commentary as well as OnStar related content.

“Last summer the Secret thing was a blast. It was something we tried in real time, and it was a great experiment. It was kind of war-roomy,” said Ms. MacGregor. This [GM campaign] is an advancement, as we’re bringing in premium elements and we’re really elevated storytelling with us and with consumers.”

Given the year long gap between AOL’s first and latest forays into live ads, it seems a fair question to ask–is this kind of campaign repeatable, or a “very special occasion/only for certain huge brands” type of thing?

Expect lots more of these type of deals, said Ms. MacGregor. “This is a big moment for us. And [CEO] Tim [Armstrong] really believes in live. He is always interested in experimenting.”

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